Revolutionary communist party

A year of struggle !

Speech on the occasion of the celebration of the PCR-RCP anniversary Sunday January 28, 2018.

Our party, the Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR-RCP), is a unique party. First of all, in 2007 we made the move to become a party in order to build it over time. Not waiting for the ideal conditions to show up, conditions over which we have no control, but to start right away to accumulate capacities in order to be able to struggle in the future was then a bold but necessary move to make. Moreover, there were important political considerations behind such an ambitious political project: always seeking to bring about what we lack; that we must build the Party in the struggles; that our political maturity is gradually won from our active participation in the class struggle.

For those who work with us and who know us, for those who observe us from afar and who read us, for those who are discovering us tonight, it should be obvious by now that the PCR-RCP does not share the revisionist’s DNA. This helps to explain why our story is an uninterrupted series of initiatives, an always better and brighter May 1st on the drawing board, new initiatives that keep on coming … and so on. Maoists must be trouble makers for capitalist society! But our Party is much more than that, it is also the summation of a large quantity of work that is not always visible: Long hours of team work; reflection; study; writing; going to the working class and into industrial areas, tasks and sectors shunned by most activists outside our organization. The PCR-RCP is at the junction of all this activity and by doing so it keeps gaining new forces, knowledge and abilities.

We are aiming for the seizure of power and to achieve this we must ourselves bring about the winning conditions. That is why we set ourselves high goals; we see far ahead and we accept the fact that we have no choice but to commit ourselves if we want to make gains. It’s easy for the masses to connect with the PCR-RCP, to be reached by its propaganda, to project oneself into its temerity. But, it is not easy to be in the PCR-RCP, to be a revolutionary communist, because in order to be a revolutionary communist one must stand amidst the turmoil, in the heat of action. Rather than a life that depends only on a salary, it is an existence full of substance that we adopt when we join the PCR-RCP, but it is also the renunciation of the tranquillity that is imposed on us.

At the same time last year, we celebrated the accomplishment of a decade of revolutionary political work. One year later, we can say loud and clear that the PCR-RCP is still and will remain, despite the storms, the driving force to carry out the proletarian revolution in Canada.

The year 2017 did not go smoothly for us, but in these events was revealed the determination and experience of our organization. Eleven years ago, we decided to found a Party so we could have the ultimate fighting tool, that of the workers, to really confront the Canadian bourgeoisie and to take power over it. We did not want to take pleasure in the margin and wait for the economic and social situation to be revolutionary. Instead we have boldly given ourselves the task of immediately undertaking a broad spectrum of work required for the survival of the communist movement in the world and here in this country. There will be no new period between today and the protracted People’s War. We are at the gates of socialism and the key issue is the power we must seize by force, controlling the chaos of the world today. This is what was, what is and what will remain our proposal, why we fight every day, through small and bigger initiatives.

We have made the choice not to abandon the working class, but on the contrary to bring it out into the open and enjoin it to fight for socialism, because it is the only prospect for liberating the full potential of proletarians. At a time when petty-bourgeois “thinkers” are abandoning workers as revolutionary subjects, we have instead chosen science, the truth, and translated it into a strong political line, one without compromise that is materialized in a strong and brave practice.

The destruction of the productive forces due to the absolute over accumulation of capital, which characterizes the economic situation of the capitalist system since the end of the 1970s, brought about transformations in the working class: quantitatively the proletariat continued to grow in size but qualitatively it became less homogeneous. In imperialist countries, these transformations opened up the way to the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia to spread its anti-communist theses based on pseudoscience under the guise of searching for “new revolutionary subjects”. But the petty-bourgeoisie is only defending its own interest and has been trying to get rid of the party form which is an impediment to its stupidity, and to abandon the workers who only inspire its contempt. We reject this reading. We are bringing back the material bases of our struggle and in order not to mislead ourselves, we submit all our activity to the goal of the proletarian revolution and protracted people’s war. There is only one style of partisans and supporters who can accomplish that task, only one party that brings them together, and this is ours, the PCR-RCP. We want to polarize bourgeois society, that is to say that the proletarian class interests stand out clearly and make sure that bourgeois reactionaries be unmasked. While doing so we also keep struggling to maintain the revolutionary forces together, making sure these forces don’t break into individual quests that would lead to the disappearance of class struggle in favour of identity struggles. We understand that the whole world, Canadian society included, is torn apart by an insoluble contradiction between the exploiters and the exploited and we have chosen our side, that of the exploited and consequently we will wage a war to the end to put an end to the capitalist mode of production.

We did not settle to go where it would be easy for us, where we would have unanimity, where we would have only friends. Already, building the Revolutionary Communist Party in an advanced capitalist society is not something that the Canadian bourgeoisie will let us do in all peace of mind, but that’s a good sign and we can congratulate ourselves for persevering in the face of growing adversity. Indeed, despite the growing surveillance and the repression we keep on making progress.

We have also seen last spring that the class struggle is reverberating into our ranks: we split up with a part of our party that was opportunist, liquidating our revolutionary line and abandoning the working class in order to become a pale copy of all the reformist groups, students and anti-capitalists, enhanced with a Maoist varnish. It was a betrayal that we could not tolerate any longer and which was detrimental to the deployment of the PCR-RCP, a party that must unite the class in the revolutionary struggle and not in verbiage and aesthetics. We have said it and we will support it to the end: Communism is not a theoretical option of the future. It is a political struggle that must exist in reality. Material reality is not transformed by ideas, but by action.

So, to quit the self-esteem and the field of petty politics, it took a lot of effort. We drew on our long experience accumulated here by the comrades, and on that of the international proletariat through the history of the communist movement. We gathered a remarkable contingent of women and men at the last demonstration on March 8th. Our message was clear and unambiguous: we, women, aspire to socialism, like our male counterparts, and our place is in the revolution.

The Montreal left has not been silent about the split in the PCR. It has exposed the anticommunism that undermines and discredits a good part of it. We have a particular style of work, proletarian and well demarcated, that bothers and that has led us to build a party, yes, the Canadian People’s Party, the one that will fight for power with all the monstrous challenges that it poses, which will liberate the territory and means of production from private property, which will return to the workers the fruit of their work and the keys to the organization of our society, which will finally break the capitalist social relations. Building a party is not popular among those who claim in favour of revolution; it is however the political base of the proletariat, the place of resolution of the small and great problems posed by the revolution. The party makes calls to the whole class. The Party is the lasting summation of the revolutionary forces.

You most certainly remember May 1, 2017, a revolutionary event in the financial heart of the city. Our contingent was prepared, coordinated, ready for battle, and took action in front of Bombardier’s headquarters. Our offensive was political and practical, and the opportunists, like our real adversaries, the bourgeoisie and its police forces, saw what kind of wood we are made of. Our offensive continued in the summer with the release of a sequence of texts that came to clarify the reasons for our split with the opportunists and dig the chasm that separates us. We have the duty to break the ideological confusion, to chase smoke screens. Later, we launched the “October, the Month of Socialism”, an initiative culminating in the “Manifestation for Socialism”. We were the only ones in North America to emphasize with such ardour and remarkable note the centenary of the Russian Revolution. We seized this occasion of celebration to renew the conscious and unconscious commitment of the Canadian and world proletariat to socialism. We could not escape this task and we took up the challenge.

Our work has never stopped in 11 years of existence. There has been no downtime for us over the last year and it is the testimony of our vigor and rigor. We tirelessly submit our accumulated forces to the test of action, and we come out stronger and stronger. Our party has made a name for itself in 2017, and we can be proud of that because it means we are moving towards our targets. In all that we undertake, we recall that political power over society is indispensable to the transformation of the lives of all the exploited, to the liberation of those who are under imperialist domination. Our Party, whose rallying is essential, is the one who has irreproachably struggled and continues to struggle for the proletariat, as a class, to triumph over the bourgeoisie.

Tonight, we do not want you to be passive spectators of our balance sheet. If you recognize yourself in what we express, it is that you must join the revolutionary movement lead by the PCR. Tonight is an injunction addressed to all: put your shoulder to the wheel without further delay. The atmosphere in an advanced capitalist country like Canada gives the illusion that there is no fire. We forget that in fact, the hours are counted, that every day lost for the revolution is a day given to imperialism to exploit and massacre our brothers and sisters here and everywhere in the world. It is often mistakenly thought that activism is routine and a relatively peaceful activity. Undeceive us. We must behave as if we were on a sinking ship. It must be kept in mind that if the revolutionary struggle does not progress, it is that it retreats. In 2018 it is brave to pass a communist leaflet for the heroes that are the workers. We need great proletarian discipline to come into contact with the working class and to forge lasting links with the proletariat. As you know, communism was endangered and communism could die if there was no one to make it live in the real world. So remember tonight that reviving Communism is the most noble, the most just cause. So do it with us!